Re: Lessons learned for Week 2 Regionals?
 

There just may be a reason for forehead protectors this year. After watching Blair get bopped by a tube, that was the first thing that popped into my head. :)

Jane

Re: Lessons learned for Week 2 Regionals?
 

I disagree, vehemently. At FLR, this simply was not true.

...and this I agree with 100%.

While this was mostly true, if one wants to be a truly competitive, top-tier team, it simply wasn't the case. FLR had many matches that were 60+ points to not very many points, with most of those points coming from tube scoring.

Re: Lessons learned for Week 2 Regionals?
 

And how many teams did you see an alliance win the minibot race and lose the match?

Re: Lessons learned for Week 2 Regionals?
 

So a lack of, or incorrect, analysis of the game requires a change in the game to make it more advantageous to your lack of, or incorrect, analysis of the game? Interesting request.

Re: Lessons learned for Week 2 Regionals?
 

It seems that minibots are like ramps were early in '07. It was extremely hard to win a match against a double ramp if you had no ramps. But, once both alliances had ramps, matchs were decided by tubes. As more and more teams get consistent minibots, tube scoring will become more important.

Re: Lessons learned for Week 2 Regionals?
 

If it was a 30 point bonus for minibots, I would agree. But the "race" nature inserts so much entropy into the match results that the winner of the match is rarely decided on by factors you could have actually designed for.

Re: Lessons learned for Week 2 Regionals?
 

Line tape problems

I saw a team identify tape problems before a qualification match, it looked scuffed or dirty from the stands. The field crew made a quick repair that the team appeared not to like and had to leave the field under protest. During autonomous their robot deployed the uber tube way prematurely.

Was the team correct or was it a field issue. I tend to believe the team because after the match, the field crew carefully repaired the tape.

Re: Lessons learned for Week 2 Regionals?
 

Us. Over and over again.

We were the most consistent minibot at the regional, with claw gremlins that kept us out of the tube-scoring quite a bit. We lost most of our games in spite of winning every minibot race we entered.

(...and I will maintain to my dying day that our last semifinal match, we did not deploy our minibot early... It wouldn't have made a difference (beyond pride) anyway, but dang it, the refs got that call dead wrong! Video will vindicate us, I do declare! :D )

I saw quite a few matches where the alliance that won the minibot race also won the match, but by a greater margin than the minibot points... There weren't that many where a successful minibot actually made a win/loss difference (though some of them were critical, of course).

Re: Lessons learned for Week 2 Regionals?
 

Make sure your minibot stays on your hostbot. I'll say it again: if you care about getting the minibot bonus, and if you value the work you put into building it, then make good and sure it doesn't fall off and get run over by a hostbot. It feels like watching your pet turtle try to cross the freeway.

A minor correction - the winning alliance in NH was 175/1519/176, which was the third seeded alliance.

Re: Lessons learned for Week 2 Regionals?
 

Did any of the other regionals have issues with their fields detecting minibots? At FLR, almost every minibot to reach the top was undetected by the touch sensor. We had to have referees keep track of which minibots were scoring, and that wasn't good when things got close at some points.

Re: Lessons learned for Week 2 Regionals?
 

Based on webcasts I watched, I think all Regionals had issues with minibot detection issues. All had refs holding up fingers and jumping/throwing arms up to indicate when hit.

Re: Lessons learned for Week 2 Regionals?
 

Well everyone has said it a million times but minibots are extremely important. Ours carried us to the finals but our manipulation wasn't key.

Make sure that your manipulation can pick up tubes without any error from the floor. Aside from that, figure out how to have a fast minibot. We are actually trying to make ours faster which is almost impossible

Tubes + Minibot = Elim Wins and Champions

Re: Lessons learned for Week 2 Regionals?
 

Just an observation from going to FLR today: I was very surprised by the amount of teams throwing tubes. I'm not sure how I feel about it, but for some of the matches, especially with powerhouses 217 and 2056, it seemed like the human players throwing tubes were doing nothing but feeding their opponents. If you throw a tube into the middle, you're basically giving it to the team with the best manipulator.

Re: Lessons learned for Week 2 Regionals?
 

You must have a working mini bot to win.

Re: Lessons learned for Week 2 Regionals?
 

One extra is a must. They do break.